Eddie? He's forever changing gear

After a four-year hiatus spent consolidating an impressively diverse and critically acclaimed acting career, Eddie Izzard has delighted his fans by returning to his 'stand-up' roots. Well, perhaps not roots, exactly.

Last week Izzard began a UK arena tour with 21 dates and cumulative ticket sales of more than 200,000, and I'm reminded that only 10 years ago he was busking in Edinburgh's Royal Mile with a routine about tea cosies, his act eclipsed by that of a man with flaming kebabs on his head. Even in the late 1990s one critic described Izzard as 'the best-kept secret in comedy'. It seems, at last, that word has got out.

He has already proved that he can be a delicate, subtle actor - think of his Tony-nominated performance as Brian in the West End production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, or, earlier this year, his portrayal of the troubled Ralph Outen in Channel 4's drama 40 - but Sexie reminds us that he can be a gorgeously flamboyant and titanic presence that would dominate a stadium even without the 30ft screen at the back which blows him up to monstrous size for those seated far away.

The transvestism can only help, of course. It's difficult to be other than flamboyant when you're a 40-year-old man with 38C breasts in a red velvet corset, leather miniskirt and boots that are not so much 'fuck me shoes', to borrow Germaine Greer's phrase, as 'fuck you, I'm wearing them'.

'Isn't he that lad that dresses up as a lady?' said my taxi driver on the way to the arena, to which the correct answer is, of course 'no' - though you try explaining the important category distinctions between female impersonator, drag act, transvestite and 'poof'.

The point about Izzard's cross-dressing is that for much of the time it has absolutely no bearing on the content of his act. No suspension of disbelief is required of his audience. Izzard is emphatically not pretending to be a woman; he is at all times all man (he even makes a joke early on about fancying women, just to clear that up), and a fine figure of one, too, albeit one presenting in spangly lip gloss and tights.

Whether he would be less funny if he wore a suit is open to debate; what is certain is that his appearance is, apparently, both mesmerising and erotically distracting to audience members of each sex and all persuasions.

Sexie, which has been touring in the US and Australia for the past four months, is a spectacle on a gargantuan scale; a phantasmagoric son et lumière extravaganza, with swirling, kaleidoscopic, light projections that cannot entirely distract from the pervasive smell of damp sports socks (one of the hazards, along with tricky acoustics, of the stadium circuit). It's a lot like having an acid trip in your school changing room, only bigger and funnier.

Adjusting to the physical demands of performing in such a space is quite a feat (he can't hear audience laughter from the stage), and if he began with a barely noticeable degree of hesitancy as he acclimatised, it wasn't long before he really began to soar.

Izzard is often described as a Surrealist, but his method is closer to Pop Art; from the mundane, the orthodox and the familiar he concocts extraordinary, multicoloured images and alternative realities, which he then inhabits and acts out, while his audience pants along behind trying to keep up and laughing so hard they snort Diet Coke out of their nostrils (unless that was just me).

He skips, in a beat, from the many uses of false breasts to Greek epic, archaeology, Gregorian chant, flies, failed guide dogs, aliens, evolution, cat-throwing firemen, and the Koran (and this is just the first half).

Yet the scattergun impression is misleading. Sexie is like a symphony; it has echoes, themes and symmetry. Sometimes his brain runs too far ahead of his audience. 'Lost them there...' he'll mutter, miming the scribbling of a memo to self.

There's only one gripe, and Izzard is by no means the only offender. When Bush established 9/11 as a 'brand name', everyone I know in England, and undoubtedly thousands more that I don't, pointed out that, for us, this is the ninth of November. It was mildly funny the first few times, but it is the kind of joke you can do at home, and you don't expect to find someone as outstandingly gifted as Izzard repeating it two and a half years later as if he'd only just thought of it (the same goes for the 7/11 joke that followed).

This aside, he is dazzling, and if you're not one of the lucky ticketed 200,000, I urge you to steal, mug or shoot your way in if you possibly can, or you might have to wait another four years.